Top student at average university?

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 7:49am

I didn’t. I just focused on your statement.

Most high-school students do know about the economy and will certainly have to worry
about it when it comes to paying for their schooling and that is in the near-term. The
economy may be different in five years - it could be a lot worse.

I don’t know much about these non-traditional roles other than having first-hand experience managing my own money. But my experience with our hires in traditional
engineering are at odds with your six-figure comment. We only hire from the top ten
percent of schools (including MIT) so I’m not talking about the average MIT students
here - I’m talking about the top MIT students.

Do you have any evidence to back up your sentence? I will ask one of our MIT new
hires about your comment and see what he says.

We had a guy with a Masters from Princeton leave earlier this year. He wasn’t making
six figures and he left to take a job at a non-profit paying far less. I assume that he
didn’t even consider non-traditional roles but thought about what he would be doing
for work - something that would make a difference and provide him with an enjoyable
work experience.

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 7:52am

We lost a lot of people to Google several years ago. Another way to circumvent the school hiring thing is to get a job in a company and become a star there. There are lots of ways to generate leverage with your reputation.

bearcats · November 18, 2009, 8:41am

"I don’t know much about these non-traditional roles other than having first-hand experience managing my own money. But my experience with our hires in traditional
engineering are at odds with your six-figure comment. We only hire from the top ten
percent of schools (including MIT) so I’m not talking about the average MIT students
here - I’m talking about the top MIT students.

Do you have any evidence to back up your sentence? I will ask one of our MIT new
hires about your comment and see what he says."

The first year analyst class at the BB I interned at had 6-8 MIT grads (don’t know exact number, just counted at the networking event) just for S&T, more than any undergrad program, with the exception of Harvard. This is not counting the quants where they almost exclusively hire from MIT, Caltech and similar geek schools…

At the street rate of 70k base, 10k signing and 50k bonus for middle bucket this year, they are bound to make well into 6 figures, even more if they are top performer and make it into top bucket.

Hiring is also way up from last year (last year was one of the lowest-hiring years)…When you see the same bank post on all three of our career websites, with on-campus interview dates spanning 2 days at each career center, at a fringe semi-target like Michigan, you know they are planning to hire a lot for their class this year. Typically this is how it goes: if they want to hire only a few, they only post at Ross. If they want to hire an average number, they post at Ross and Engineering. If they want to hire a lot, they post at Ross, engineering AND the general college career website.

Oh and the worst schools with more than 1 kid in the class are Michigan and Texas, so you pretty much have no chance from non-targets like even BC unless you do some serious networking and get lucky. It is the way it works… G.P is just painting the reality… don’t shoot the messenger

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 9:58am

I’ve already admitted that I don’t know - I was just looking for evidence.

I’ll still ask one of our recent hires his views on this. It may be that many MIT students don’t know or care about the money differences between engineering and what else is out there.

sakky · November 18, 2009, 10:01am

If you can, that is. Let’s face it - many companies are not really meritocracies, but rather allocate promotions and opportunities by way of seniority and office politics rather than actual work quality. In such organizations, it doesn’t matter how technically adept you are, as you have to wait your turn behind those who have worked in the company longer and/or have greater political pull. (Many government organizations are run this way).

Heck, technical adroitness may actually signify a a deep threat to the power structure at some firms such that you may actually be likely to lose your job, for your capabilities only serve to highlight how unproductive the other employees truly are. Nobody wants a ‘ratebuster’ working beside them, making them look bad. Hence, you may quickly find yourself to be a social outcast within the company culture - a painful experience for anybody, particularly somebody fresh out of school. Heck, you may even find yourself prejudicially blamed by other coworkers for whatever problems may arise, for they are looking for any excuse for you to be terminated.

sakky · November 18, 2009, 10:21am

That’s a most interesting hiring strategy, for that begs the question: how exactly the heck would you know somebody is in the top 10% at MIT? MIT doesn’t publish class ranks, nor do they award Latin honors. Granted, I suppose you could guess from somebody’s GPA, but you would have no way of actually knowing.

And, frankly, even if you could deduce who exactly was in the top 10%, I’m surprised if your firm - which I must assume is a regular engineering firm - would be able to hire anybody from MIT at all. The top 10% of MIT students are some of the very best engineering students in the world, and almost all of them are headed for grad school of some sort. Of the few that are not, many of them are coveted by the consulting and banking firms that have previously been discussed, and of the (small) remainder, most of them would be looking at trendy startups such as Facebook or Apple, or founding their own. How many candidates does that leave?

Let’s run some quick numbers. MIT produces about 1000 new graduates every year, of which 600 of them are engineering degrees (the rest mostly consisting of science, econ, math or Sloan Management degrees, which I assume you would not be hiring for engineering jobs). The top 10% of the engineers would then consist of merely 60 students. Of that 60, I would guess that at the very least 40 of them are headed for grad school. {Let’s face it: if you truly are in the top 10% of engineering students at MIT, you can easily win admission to a top grad school, and almost certainly back at MIT itself*.} Of the 20 that remain, at least 10 are headed for consulting and banking, and probably at least another 5 are headed for Google, Apple, or other trendy engineering firms, or launching their own.

So that basically leaves your firm with (at most) 5 potential hires from MIT every year? Really? You’re only going to consider hiring out of a pool of just (at most) 5 people from one particular school? That’s it? That deeply strains credulity.

*In 2007, a whopping 45% of all graduating MIT seniors were headed for grad school of some sort, with 137 graduating MIT seniors out of the class of ~1000 reported headed for grad school at…MIT itself; 27 were headed to Harvard; 20 to Stanford; and 13 to Berkeley. Hence, I think it is entirely reasonable to believe that most of the top 10% of MIT engineers could probably stay at MIT for grad school.

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 10:24am

We’re losing someone in a few weeks that is a technical superstar with excellent people
skills. After he announced that he was leaving, his management chain tried to talk him
into staying with promises of “stuff” in the future. Other managers tried to offer him more
money to stay. It is a very, very comfortable place to work at. The pay is excellent as
are the working conditions but the politics are limiting. It’s a nice place if you are an older
employee. He put his resume out and had a great job in a very short time.

I work in a highly technical company where technical skills are highly valued. It’s just that
managerial skills are even more highly compensated. I think that almost all of the manager
that I know where promoted from within.

In my particular case after I gave my notice for my first job, they offered me more money
and then asked me if I would do contract work for them. I wouldn’t have had time to do that with the new consulting job.

The IS department at that first job had a manager (non-technical), another guy that was a programmer/analyst that never got anything done, a senior programmer and me. The senior programmer didn’t work a lot of hours (liked bars and women) but he showed me the ropes and I dealt with individual departments to learn what they do. I wound up doing most of the programming work and it was a blast. They had a lot of information systems: payroll, order entry, inventory, accounts payable, accounts receivable, labor, routing, etc. One amazing thing to me was that I had access to all of the information in these systems.

I always thought that I was having the most fun in the entire department. I was oblivious
to all of the politics going on. At any rate, those were the days when programmers were in
such short supply that companies would recruit people without a degree.

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 10:32am

That’s something that Human Resources takes care of. It’s a public policy though.

And, frankly, even if you could deduce who exactly was in the top 10%, I’m surprised
if your firm - which I must assume is a regular engineering firm - would be able to hire
anybody from MIT at all. The top 10% of MIT students are some of the very best
engineering students in the world, and almost all of them are headed for grad school
of some sort. Of the few that are not, many of them are coveted by the consulting
and banking firms that have previously been discussed, and of the (small) remainder,
most of them would be looking at trendy startups such as Facebook or Apple, or
founding their own. How many candidates does that leave?

Let’s run some quick numbers. MIT produces about 1000 new graduates every year,
of which 600 of them are engineering degrees (the rest mostly consisting of science,
econ, math or Sloan Management degrees, which I assume you would not be hiring for
engineering jobs). The top 10% of the engineers would then consist of merely 60
students. Of that 60, I would guess that at the very least 40 of them are headed for
grad school. {Let’s face it: if you truly are in the top 10% of engineering students at
MIT, you can easily win admission to a top grad school, and almost certainly back at
MIT itself*.} Of the 20 that remain, at least 10 are headed for consulting and banking,
and probably at least another 5 are headed for Google, Apple, or other trendy
engineering firms, or launching their own.

We’re one of those trendy engineering firms. Your argument about grad school is faulty because we hire those with bachelors, masters and Phds.

I think that we’ve hired five to seven MIT grads this year in our building. But we’re a small satellite building that is relatively close to MIT. I don’t know how many were hired on the main campus.

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 11:18am

Just spoke to another engineer and apparently we’re getting in a decent number of MIT resumes, both undergrad and grad for next spring.

purduefrank · November 18, 2009, 12:05pm

Yes, but that is a double edged sword. I speak with personal experience about passing up my state flagship to come to Purdue. At the time I was slightly fixated on having some name recognition on my resume – and now a few years later I stare down the barrel of whooping debt despite the fact that I have numerous aid sources.

Are there benefits to being here, yes, certainly. I’ve had over ten interviews in the last month despite the fact that I am, at best, a middle of the road student competing in a bad economy. I don’t know whether or not I could have been a top student at my flagship – but I certainly could have landed a few jobs there as well, plus saved myself tens of thousands of dollars.

The other question is whether you’re really willing to work hard to do mediocre at a decent school. I put in hours upon hours of work/night and it’s draining, it almost leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth actually.

So, the moral of my story isn’t that all schools are the same… It’s more or less whether or not it’s worth it. Debt for days, a horrendous amount of work, and at the end of the day I end up with a few more job offers which may or may not pay 5-10K more than the jobs I could have gotten otherwise. Take some taxes out of that 5-10 and you’re working off the debt with effectively 3-7K/yr. I honestly don’t know that it makes sense – which is why I give the advice that I do.

And, I have to say that even after a year on this site I still scratch my head about all of this banking/consulting conversation. If you’re one of the few that can get those positions, so be it. However, even if I could I wouldn’t – I honestly can’t stand the attitudes of those people who populate the industries… Yes, it’s a generalization but I’ll be damned if I’ve met more than one person who didn’t display that. Plus, you work like a mule – hr for hr you’re probably making less than a McDonalds manager for at least the first few years. Not only this, but the OP asked about a state engineering school compared to a top engineering school – if there was even a hint that he was interested in banking I might understand – but there wasn’t. In fact he explicitly states that at the top school he won’t be doing very well - it doesn’t take an engineer to figure out that the guy’s not looking to get into banking… 9/10 chance he’s a guy/girl just like me who wanted to get a good engineering degree. Less than 1/10 chance he’s anything like bearcats… No offense buddy, but you fit perfectly in ibanking.

notre_dame_AL · November 18, 2009, 12:20pm

Bottom line–or what we have seen occurring–look at the school’s career center when considering the school. How active is the center w/drawing employers to career fairs, are students actually recruited for jobs at companies that interest you? It has become very apparent that some schools have very active career centers. If I were guiding a student w/regards to what schools to apply-career center would be at or near top of the list when looking at schools.

BCEagle91 · November 18, 2009, 1:00pm

I spoke to a recent MIT hire and he interviewed for IB and said that it is possible to get these kinds of high-paying jobs but he was more interested in working in science and engineering.

federernadal · November 18, 2009, 1:10pm

Yes, purduefrank, most likely I am not going into banking.

I have nothing against banking, but I just have a strong inclination towards engineering.

I really want to avoid getting into debt of any kind after graduating college. The opportunity cost to this seems a few job opportunities or a higher salary.

Does it get all even? Using random numbers, as a state university graduate I’d earn $100, but keep it all to myself. As a top university graduate I’d earn $120 but give $20 as repayment.

Mr_Payne · November 18, 2009, 4:16pm

The question is about the benefits or disadvantages of a top school versus lower school. It mentions nothing about timing of the job search, so I assume early/mid/late career were all options.

purduefrank · November 18, 2009, 6:46pm

Its not quite that simple, and of course there are always going to be exceptions to the norm. Personally, if I were to do it all over again I may have just gone to the in-state school. The difference in starting salary is really never going to justify the OS tuition, at least for a number of years. Even with your low-end entry level engineering positions youre going to make 50K and you can land one of these jobs from just about any semi-decent state school. So now lets say you go to a top school and get on with Google, Facebook, ExxonMobil, or some other high paying company at 85K Even though youre making 35K more/yr on paper, by the time you give a third of that to the government youre left with 23K more/yr. Now consider yourself someone like me who will graduate with just over 60K in debt that grows by roughly 6%/yr - you are still talking a number of years before you break even.

I guess the counter argument is that having experience with one of these more prestigious firms will benefit you in your career down the road but I always tend to think that a highly motivated person will succeed with or without this benefit.

Another thing to consider (although I dont know how applicable this is to every engineering major as Im in IE) is that a lot of the upper-middle spectrum entry level jobs involve these leadership or management rotational programs where the company moves you around from place to place for your first 2-3 years with varying job functions in order to give you a better understanding of the overall company operations. While this is a fast track to higher paying management jobs, its almost like another 2-3 years of school. Numerous companies have told me that the completion rates in these programs can be only 50% due to unsatisfactory job performance, or self-withdraw due to stress, moving around too much, etc So its almost like you work your tail off to get the degree in a notoriously rigorous engineering program, survive the fairly high drop-out rates, and then you still have another 2-3 years of the same thing before you actually get to stay in one place and feel like there is at least some job security.

In other words, just because some jobs are considered more prestigious it doesnt necessarily mean that they are the best choice for everybody. I guess the main thing to think about in my opinion is exactly what it is you want to do. If you can do that same thing at firms that recruit at your state school, go there. If your dead-set on landing the most prestigious job you can, I guess the name brand schools help but it will come with a price tag in one form or another.

sakky · November 19, 2009, 6:04am

Then I would be most interested indeed in how exactly your HR department could know this, considering that people at MIT wouldn’t even know whether they’re in the top 10% or not.

Is it? If anything, I would suspect it would make your firm’s logic more faulty, not mine. After all, how exactly would one deduce who is within the top 10% of PhD graduates, for which grades are effectively irrelevant? PhD students care about research - so what would one do, attempt to compare all dissertations and attempt to deduce which ones are within the top 10%? {And if there were truly in the top 10% of the PhD graduates, it is highly likely that they have an excellent career in tenure-track academia available to them, or a very cushy consulting/banking career, so how many really would consider working for your company?}

I’m sorry: I’m afraid I have to call BS on this one. The situation does not add up. Nobody even at MIT knows where exactly the top 10% threshold lies, and even if you could deduce that information, those students are slippery catches.

I might believe that if you didn’t claim to have a rule regarding the top 10% that simply lacks credibility. Again, I return to the basic question: how would you know who is in the top 10%?

Perhaps that’s something that you should inquire to your HR staff. If your HR department claims to know something about MIT’s student rankings that MIT itself doesn’t seem to know, then that is interesting information indeed.

sakky · November 19, 2009, 6:08am

Sure: for your company perhaps. But I think you’ve already agreed that your company is most atypical. Surely you must agree that most companies do not operate as yours does (or if they do, then what exactly is the special advantage held by your firm?)

sakky · November 19, 2009, 6:37am

In the defense of the top schools, there is something to be said for their risk reduction associated with the opportunities for obtaining top-paying jobs regardless of major. For example, a student at Stanford or Princeton doesn’t really need to major in engineering: he can simply shift to an easy humanities/soc-sci major and still be a viable candidate for a lucrative consulting or banking job. {For example, one guy I know was a poli-sci major at Princeton and freely admits that he certainly never studied as hard as the engineers did, nevertheless was offered a job at Goldman, parleyed that into a position at a private equity firm before heading for Harvard Business School.} Heck, even an MIT student who finds engineering to be too hard can checkdown to a business major at the Sloan School which, while hardly easy, is certainly far less stressful than any engineering major at MIT, and probably less stressful than engineering majors at many (decent) state schools. Yet Sloanies enjoy higher salaries than do many of the engineering majors at MIT.

On the other hand, the student at a state school who wants a decent career basically has little choice but to complete an engineering major. What if they can’t? As we all know, engineering attrition rates are high; many (probably most) incoming engineering students will not complete the program. Many will instead switch to an easy humanities/soc-sci major if they even manage to graduate at all.

BCEagle91 · November 19, 2009, 7:52am

I would assume that they would go by GPA. But I will ask someone at the office about it today.

Your wording implied that we didn’t hire anyone with advanced degrees as it took
grad positions out of the mix. If your position is different from that now, then it is
a non-issue.

PhD students do care about research but you’d be amazed at how many are interested
in money too, especially when they have a wife and/or a kid or two.

As far as I know, the top 10% thing only applies to undergraduates.

You can call whatever you want on it. It’s something that the company has stated
publicaly in the past.

See above.

It may very well be an arbitrary GPA cutoff.

It’s a top-tier company and number one in our industry. I would guess that other top firms that want to keep people long-term do this sort of thing too. I’ve heard that it’s pretty cushy at Google. I think that things were good at Microsoft above the grunt programmer level. I assume that other companies competing for talent do provide comparable benefits to what we do.

sakky · November 19, 2009, 8:18am

Right - and what exactly is the top 10% GPA cutoff? Nobody at MIT seems to know, so how would you guys know?

Absolutely not, for the only way that a ‘top 10% cutoff’ could possibly make sense is with regards to the undergrads. After all, grades mean relatively little for master’s level students and even less for PhD students. PhD students are particularly notorious for not caring a whit about grades (as long as they pass), for what they really care about is research. After all, who really cares if your grades are mediocre if your dissertation is brilliant? In contrast, who cares if you get straight A’s if your research is mediocre?

But that of course begs the question of exactly how anybody would be able to devise a ‘top 10%’ cutoff for PhD students. What would you do: read every single dissertation and then arbitrarily assign them to deciles? Heck, even the journal refereeing process has great difficulty doing that, as academia is replete with papers that were rejected by top journals but were eventually published at lower-level journals and then eventually became some of the most widely cited and respected papers in the history of their fields. {And, conversely, many papers in the top journals are never cited once even after decades of publication.}

I’m actually quite amazed how many of them are interested in academic tenure. It’s rather hard to beat a guaranteed job for life.

But regardless, I would love to hear a system that would supposedly be able to ascertain exactly who among the PhD population are within the top 10%.

Oh, I see. So now it is you who is changing the parameters of discussion. What that means is that many of the MIT graduates that you are hiring may not truly be ‘top’ MIT graduates as you had claimed.

Wait: what’s this? Companies make public statements that might actually turn out to be false? I’m shocked!

Consider the following mission statement:

Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence." Its “Vision and Values” mission statement declared, "We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves…We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here.

Sounds inspiring, does it not? Instills within me a burgeoning desire to work for Enron. Oh wait.

[RW</a> ONLINE:Ruined by Enron](<a href=“http://revcom.us/a/v23/1130-39/1136/enron_workers.htm]RW”>RW ONLINE:Ruined by Enron)

See above.

Which is what I thought: which means that you don’t actually know whether you’re hiring the top 10% or not.

So you admit that this is a top-tier company that is #1 in the field, therefore it is a highly atypical firm by its very definition. The vast majority of firms are obviously nowhere near being top-tier firms or #1 in anything.

Let me put it to you another way. Is your firm offering an above-average package of opportunities - whether that be pay, career advancement opportunities, brand name cachet, or whatever it may be? If so, then you must agree that, by definition, most other firms do not offer such an attractive package (for otherwise, your firm would not be above average). However, if your firm does not, then why exactly would anybody prefer your firm over the average firm?

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